


nothing but the thought of you (i went wandering)

by oryx



Category: Kamen Rider Blade, Kamen Rider Kuuga
Genre: Apocalypse, Future Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 15:28:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8290924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: Kenzaki takes a trip with a friend after the world ends.





	

The Battle Fight ends alongside humanity.  
   
Seven days after the bombs fall, it stops – that nagging sensation in the corner of his mind, that itch for combat that continually urges him across the world like a homing beacon. A feeling he has long since learned to ignore (but never, ever forget). One moment it is there, like always, and then, as if a switch somewhere has suddenly been flipped,  
   
it is gone.  
   
Kazuma’s footing goes unsteady on the pile of rubble he’s clambering over. His heart skips a beat, feeling like it’s just been squeezed. He sucks in a breath and stares up at the sky, half-expecting to see that twisting black monolith hovering above him, but there is nothing, just the sickly greenish sheen of radiation peeking out from behind the low-hanging clouds of smog and haze.  
   
It’s over, then. Just like that. And all it took was the end of the world.  
   
Even God can’t be stubborn forever, he supposes.  
   
  
   
  
   
He hates himself a little, for being so happy about it – the prospect of seeing Hajime.  
   
Humankind dying by the billions is a pretty shitty trade-off, after all, just to be with one person again.  
   
There aren’t many corpses, thankfully. Most of them had been infected with a disease they called the Scourge long before the bombs had dropped – a parasite that consumed human flesh and bone from the inside out and left nothing but scraps behind. But the signs of life are everywhere. A broken, old-fashioned cellphone, its cracked screen still flickering. An open suitcase, with beautiful designer clothes spilling out of it. A child’s stuffed toy, shaped like a cat and missing an eye.  
   
Five hundred years ago it would’ve cut him deeply to see these fragments abandoned along the wayside. But now he simply pauses in front of each one; claps his hands together and says a quick, silent prayer before moving on down the road.  
   
(Funny, he thinks, how death seems to mean less and less the longer you stay alive.)  
   
  
   
  
   
He meets someone in what’s left of San Francisco.  
   
They round a debris-strewn corner at the exact same moment and stop short, just in time to avoid colliding, their eyes wide with disbelief as they blink at each other.  
   
“Well damn,” the stranger says finally, his face splitting into a grin. “I knew I couldn’t be the only one.”  
   
He says his name is Yusuke Godai, and he looks positively thrilled when Kazuma introduces himself in return, switching into Japanese so suddenly that Kazuma almost doesn’t comprehend his words. He’s spent so many years now traipsing across the Americas that the sound of his native language is somewhat unreal.  
   
“Where’re you headed?” Godai asks, pleasant and conversational, as they walk side-by-side, picking their way through a traffic jam of broken-down cars and shattered glass.  
   
“Home, actually,” Kazuma says, and pauses to hop over a gaping fissure in the street. He frowns. “Though… I’m not sure how to get there. You think some of the planes at the airport are still fit to fly?”  
   
“Probably,” Godai muses. “But even in this day and age you still need to know how to operate one, don’t you? Can’t say I ever picked that skill up… Might be better off with a boat, to tell the truth. Most of those’re 95% automated these days.”  
   
Which is how they wind up at the docks, the smell of salt and rotting fish lying heavy in the back of their throats as they stare up in silence at a massive luxury cruise liner, its hull and portside windows a little worse for the wear but otherwise perfectly intact.  
   
“On the bright side,” Godai says, “at least travel is a lot cheaper now.”  
   
For the first time since the world ended, Kazuma laughs.  
   
  
   
  
   
They reprogram the ship’s destination from Honolulu to Tokyo with some difficulty (“I was all caught up with technology fifty years ago,” Godai mutters, jabbing insistently at the holoscreen), and it’s only as they head down to the kitchens to check on the food situation that Kazuma finally asks:  
   
“How did you survive?”  
   
Godai nods approvingly at a well-stocked cupboard full of nonperishable groceries before looking over his shoulder at Kazuma. “Me? Oh, y’know.” He makes a nebulous hand gesture. “I’m not strictly human.”  
   
“…Oh,” Kazuma says, alarm bells going off his mind, setting down a can of evaporated milk with more force than he intended. “That’s – me neither.”  
   
His thoughts begin to race. Is this person an Undead too, somehow? Is _that_ why he lost the magnetic pull towards Hajime? Perhaps the Battle Fight isn’t over after all – it just gained another participant.  
   
But Godai is looking at him with keen, friendly interest rather than hostility. “Really?” he says. “Never met someone in the same boat as me… But I guess we’re in the same boat in general at this point, right?” He grins at his own joke. “How’d you end up like that? If you don’t mind me asking.”  
   
Gradually, Kazuma can feel the tension in his shoulders lessen.  
   
“It’s… kind of a long story.”  
   
Godai glances up from where he’s admiring the stainless steel cookware, raising an eyebrow at Kazuma.  
   
“Well it is a two-day trip,” he says. “We’re gonna have to pass the time somehow.”  
   
So Kazuma tells him. Everything, from start to finish. They sit on the VIP deck and drag their feet in the pool, passing a bottle of top-shelf rum back and forth between them (he’s fairly sure that neither of them can get drunk, but it’s the gesture that counts), and Kazuma tells him all about BOARD, about Blade, about the Battle Fight. About Hajime.  
   
“So you haven’t seen him in…?”  
   
“103 years,” Kazuma says. “And that last time was just from a distance, y’know? Things were… kinda rough then. We couldn’t risk getting any closer. So it’ll be,” and here he swallows hard around the words, a tight feeling in his chest, “it’ll be nice to see him for real.”  
   
A sudden wave of nervousness washes over him. He hasn’t answered any of Hajime’s calls lately. It had been one of _those_ moods again: the kind that made it hurt more than usual to hear his voice, all too conscious of the distance between them. He hopes that Hajime isn’t too angry with him for it.  
   
Godai ‘hmm’s thoughtfully, leaning back on his hands and staring up at the sky – clearer here out on the open ocean, but still off-colour, the radiation tingeing it with mottled yellowish hues.  
   
“Sounds like a real romance for the ages,” he says, a faint smile curving his lips.  
   
“You think?” Kazuma laughs, palming the back of his neck, unable to disguise how pleased he is to hear that. “I’ve always thought… anyone else would’ve ended up the same, if they were in our shoes.” Realization strikes him, then, and he turns to look at Godai curiously. “D’you have some reason for going back? You didn’t have to come with me if you didn’t want to – ”  
   
Godai shakes his head as if to dismiss the thought. “Nah, I’ve been thinking lately that I probably should. There’s someone I haven’t visited in a while either. Though it’s only been about 60 years for me.”  
   
“Who…?”  
   
Godai lifts a hand and points to his ring finger, where for the first time Kazuma notices a plain silver wedding band, its surface dull and rusted around the edges with age.  
   
“I’ve never been away this long before,” he says, and though his tone is light there’s something forced about it. “I’ll have to make it up to him somehow.”  
   
Kazuma opens his mouth to ask “what’s his name,” “how did you meet,” to say “that’s great, that you have someone like Hajime too, someone to come home to even when the world itself has died,” but Godai is getting to his feet and stretching, the now-empty bottle of liquor held lightly between his fingers, and the moment has ended as quick as it came.  
   
“I’m gonna go check out the master suite,” Godai says, an enthusiastic gleam in his eye, and Kazuma watches him as he walks away, feeling as if he’s seen that strange symbol on the back of Godai’s shirt before, a long, long time ago.  
   
But no, he thinks. He’s probably just imagining things.  
   
His memory isn’t what it used to be, after all.  
   
Godai returns an hour later with tales of silk sheets and a pressure-jet shower and one of those fancy mirrors that read your vitamin intake and cholesterol via a retinal scan. But despite how impressed he sounds, he proceeds to stretch out on the deck chair next to Kazuma’s all the same, and the two of them stay like that, listening to the waves and staring up at a night sky that looks like an oil slick, until finally Kazuma closes his eyes and drifts away.  
   
  
  
  
   
Godai, as it turns out, is an excellent chef.  
   
“Sopaipillas pasadas,” he says, pushing a plate of fried pastries towards Kazuma. “Learned the recipe from a family I stayed with in Chile. That was,” and here he frowns pensively, “300 years ago? Man. Time really flies.”  
   
Kazuma takes a bite and can feel his eyes widen. “This is really good,” he says.  
   
“They’d be even better if I had fresh any ingredients,” Godai says, lifting his hands as if to say ‘what can you do.’ “Only so much you can expect in the apocalypse, I suppose.”  
   
Kazuma mulls over that word as he chews. _Apocalypse._ The apocalypses in old movies had always felt so definite, so _intense_ – wiping out all traces of what civilization once was. But this, he thinks, as glances around at the otherwise empty dining room, the unoccupied space pressing down on him like weight… This just feels more disconcerting than anything. The people are gone, but everything else still remains.  
   
“It’s like the Rapture,” he says, and Godai blinks at him for a moment before laughing.  
   
“It kinda is, isn’t it? You’d think I’d be used to it by now, being the odd one out, but…” He trails off.  
   
“It still feels strange being the only ones left behind,” Kazuma finishes.  
   
Godai nods pensively. For a long moment they sit there in suffocating silence, until finally he claps his hands together and leaps to his feet, his easy smile falling back in place.  
   
“Well, no point sitting around,” he says. “Might as well see what our deluxe vacation package has to offer, don’t you think?”  
   
They discover a sauna on the lower deck, and sit there sweltering in the steam for at least an hour, comparing the places they’ve been. They’ve both been to Naples and Rome, but Kazuma has never been Florence. Both have been to the coast of South Africa, but for Godai it had only been a weekend layover. ( _How many of those places are unrecognizable now? How many are in ruins?_ asks a voice in the back of Kazuma’s mind, but he drowns out those words with laughter as best he can.)  
   
They discover a rec room, where Godai beats him in a manner of minutes in a game of chess played on a massive holographic board. A lounge, dimly lit and decorated in shades of dark purple, complete with an antique piano that Godai plays with ease.  
   
“…A man of many talents, huh?” Kazuma says, wide-eyed, as he claps at the end the performance.  
   
“4019, to be exact,” Godai says with a grin. “What about you? You must’ve picked up some skills over the years.”  
   
Kazuma has to think long and hard about that. He’s always considered himself more of an audience member, to be honest – someone who appreciates other people’s talents from afar. But he supposes even he has a few areas of expertise.  
   
“I… worked as a bartender for a while,” he says, which of course is how he winds up behind the bar, Godai testing his knowledge of the world’s most obscure cocktails (“I never did get to try a rum martinez”) before settling down a bit and asking for an old fashioned. As Kazuma adds the bitters to the glass he can’t help but feel an odd sense of calm steal over him. Godai is telling a story about a job he had long ago at a restaurant in Morocco and it all feels so normal. So _easy_. Hard to fathom that at this very moment they’re adrift on an empty sea in an empty world.  
   
When it comes time to add the whiskey, he makes sure to add some extra flair as he flips the bottle up over his shoulder and catches it expertly behind his back.  
   
If he can still remember these old tricks, then maybe everything’s not lost after all.  
   
  
   
  
   
“Do you think any humans survived?”  
   
The question slips out before he can stop himself. They’ve once again foregone the luxury suite in favor of deck chairs by the pool, lying there staring up at the dark, muddled sky and listening to the distant sounds of the ocean rushing past, and he can feel Godai glance over at him.  
   
“I just,” Kazuma soldiers on. “I can’t really wrap my head around it, y’know? Every single one of them being gone… _Someone_ must have made it, right? Holed up in a shelter somewhere?”  
   
He can see Godai nod out of the corner of his eye, slow and thoughtful. “I’d say it’s pretty likely. People have a way of getting by. But, you know… I think this is definitely the end of our world, Kenzaki-san. Whatever comes after won’t be anything like what we remember.”  
   
“…Yeah,” Kazuma says, and his throat feels oddly tight for some reason. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”  
   
For a moment they lapse into silence.  
   
“It’s… still too bad, though,” he continues. “Everything that’s happened.” He stretches out a hand to the sky and stares up at it, at the way it’s silhouetted against the mottled purplish clouds. “When I was younger all I wanted was to protect everyone. And I think I did alright, back then. But this time around, I just… stood there and watched it happen. I couldn’t do anything for them.”

His own words seems to hang suspended in the air around him, choking his breath and pressing down on his chest like a weight. He's supposed to be a Kamen Rider, isn't he? He's supposed to be a hero.  
   
“There’s only so much people like you _can_ do,” Godai is saying, and though his voice is calm and soothing there’s a bone-deep tiredness to it, too. “Not every problem is a monster you can fight. The world’s not that simple.  
   
“At least, it wasn’t,” he adds, after a contemplative pause. “I guess here in the new world, who’s to say?”  


  
  
   
It’s mid-afternoon the next day when they catch sight of land. He finds Godai on the observation deck at the bow of the ship, peering intently through a pair of binoculars, and he passes them to Kazuma without being asked.  
   
“Had to change our trajectory a bit,” he says. “The port didn’t look so great.”  
   
“So we’re just gonna…?”  
   
“Run aground? Yep.” Godai looks over at him with a sunny expression. “I recommend holding on to something once we get a little closer.”  
   
That warning turns out to be well-founded. Kazuma nearly gets thrown over the railing he’s chosen to cling to as the ship plows itself straight into sand and shallow water, the hull emitting an ominous groaning noise from the friction. From there it’s a matter of lowering a lifeboat and rowing the rest of the way to shore, where they rest for a moment in the massive shadow of the cruise liner, Kazuma sifting coarse sand between his fingers as they stare up at its towering outline.  
   
“I guess I should’ve asked this before I parked the ship on the beach,” Godai says, frowning, “but you’re certain this Hajime guy is still in Japan? You don’t think you might’ve missed each other or something?”  
   
Kazuma nods without hesitation. “I’m sure he’s here,” he says. “What about the person you want to see? You don’t think he would’ve left to look for you?”  
   
Godai smiles, then, in a way that doesn’t seem to reach his eyes. “No, no,” he says, waving a hand as if to dismiss the thought. “He’s always been waiting for me. Pretty sure that won’t change anytime soon.”  
   
It would only take about a day to hike on foot to his and Hajime’s meeting place, but Godai seems dead set on getting him there as quickly as possible. (“All the time in the world is no excuse,” he says, looking strangely somber for a moment.) He goes from abandoned car to abandoned car as they trek along the road, finally finding a model that suits his tastes, jimmying the door open with a wink. Kazuma slides into one of the front seats and watches in astonishment as Godai removes the dashboard paneling and fiddles expertly with the wiring, the car revving to life a moment later with only a minor shudder.  
   
“So when you say you have a few thousand skills…?”  
   
He laughs, turning the nav screen towards Kazuma so that he can input their destination. “I mean… It was inevitable, I think. Picking up a few not-entirely-legal talents along the way. You must’ve broken some laws over the years, right?”  
   
Kazuma can feel his brow furrow. “I… think I might have shoplifted accidentally once?”  
   
Godai blinks at him for a moment before reaching out to clap him on the shoulder. “You’re a good guy, Kenzaki-san,” he says, as the car – with a troubling whirring noise from under the hood, but nonetheless – lurches forward and begins to roll down the empty street.  
   
  
   
  
   
It does sting a bit, to see his homeland like this – wreckage giving way to an eerily silent ghost town as the car takes them towards the city outskirts. But for hundreds of years now, with each subsequent visit he’s been watching Japan change. Most of the places he used to know vanished long before this, taller and sleeker buildings springing up in their place, and even taller buildings after that, until even his memory of what was where became jumbled. Tokyo hasn’t been familiar to him for at least five centuries now.  
   
Maybe that’s why he can look at these streets with no people in them and feel only the slightest ache.  
   
Godai gets quieter too, the closer they get to their destination, his nostalgic stories and off-key humming fading away into taciturn silence. They stare out the windows at the rocky, sun-bleached cliffs that are beginning to rise up around them, conifers with bent, lichen-stained trunks growing along the slanted slopes.  
   
“I just realized,” Kazuma says, sitting up a little straighter in his seat. “You listened to my whole story, but… I never really asked about you. About how you – how you got like that. The whole not quite human thing.”  
   
Godai huffs out a quiet laugh without meeting his eyes, still watching the scenery as it flashes past. “It wasn’t really anything special. Not like what you did. It was… just a split-second choice. I got compelled, almost. I didn’t have any clue what would happen to me after.” He pauses, fingers drumming thoughtfully on the armrest. “Or maybe I did. But if I did, then it was in a subconscious way, y’know? The kind of thing that’s buried deep down and you don’t know how it got there, or if it’s even real.  
   
“Either way, I don’t regret it,” he continues. Another pause, and then: “Even if I do resent it once in a while.”  
   
Kazuma nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice comes out hollow and distant. “Yeah, same here.”  
   
It’s minutes later that the car finally glides to a halt, coming to a stop halfway between a crossroads. The two of them emerge, stretching, into the late afternoon sunlight, and Kazuma is struck by how clean the air tastes here – a strange chemical bite to it beneath the tang of ocean salt, but still far fresher than anything he’s breathed in weeks. For a moment he can close his eyes and imagine that nothing has changed. That he’s twenty-two again in more than just appearance, that he’s heading home to Kotaro’s after fighting an Undead along the coast. That any second now Shiori will call to ask him how it went –  
   
“This is the place, then?” Godai says, and Kazuma opens his eyes.  
   
“Yep. Just up that way.”  
   
Godai hoists his backpack over his shoulder, ‘hmm’ing to himself. “Well I wouldn’t want to disturb a personal moment,” he says. He glances over at Kazuma with a soft, knowing expression. “You can introduce me later, I’m sure. I’ll be over that way.” He jabs a thumb towards the low road, which winds down to a flat, reedy stretch of land dotted here and there with extravagant houses. “Might as well hunt around for a place to stay. I’m guessing at least one of those mansions has a well-stocked kitchen.”  
   
He moves to walk away but seems to recall something mid-step, turning back with an easy smile.  
   
“Y’know… you seem kinda on-edge. Don’t worry so much about the details, Kenzaki-san.” Godai lifts a hand and flashes a thumbs-up in his direction – a gesture Kazuma hasn’t seen in ages. “If you and him have stuck it out this long, I don’t think you have anything to be nervous about.”  
   
And at that he gives a parting wave before setting off down the road, leaving Kazuma staring wide-eyed at his retreating figure.  
   
He remembers now. Where he once saw that symbol. He remembers a battle, centuries and centuries ago. He remembers being beaten, lying in a heap on the forest floor with Blade’s power splintering all around him, the Joker straining to take hold. The enemy approaching with a steady menace, its claws scraping the bark of the trees and its jaws open wide, revealing rows of serrated teeth. And then: a person, standing between him and it with their hand outstretched. A Rider, with red armor that settled on to their body like a second skin.  
   
_Yongou_ is what he’d thought, then.  
   
_Kuuga_ is what he learned later, and something about that name stuck in the back of his mind, lingering for decades after, bright and clear and wide like the sky had been that day.  
   
  
   
  
   
Hajime is facing towards the ocean.  
   
His hair is shoulder-length again. When he turns to look at Kazuma, his face seems older, somehow.  
   
“Took you long enough,” he says, raising an eyebrow, and Kazuma laughs.  
   
“Sorry. Had to get creative figuring out how to get here.”  
   
They fall into silence for a moment, and in this moment the reality of what’s happening hits Kazuma like a bullet to the chest – that he’s standing here in front of Hajime without any urge to fight. That he’s looking him in the eyes without the Joker trying to claw its way to the surface.  
   
“It’s been a while, Kenzaki,” Hajime says. His expression is soft.  
   
“…Yeah,” Kazuma says, and his voice almost gets caught in his throat. He reaches out haltingly to curl his fingers around Hajime’s wrist, feeling his pulse beneath his fingertips (slower than a human’s, uneven at times, its rhythm exactly the same as Kazuma’s). “It really has.”


End file.
